


said that you would like to share my road

by diogxnes



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Hop definitely has some unresolved issues but he's gonna be a great dad anyway!, Parental Jim "Chief" Hopper, Post-Season/Series 01, Protective Jim "Chief" Hopper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 15:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21340294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diogxnes/pseuds/diogxnes
Summary: She was watching him, Hopper realized, already in bed and under the covers. He cleared his throat, about to wish her good night, and then remembered the question that had been burning in the back of his mind since he found her. “Hey, kid?” he said. “Is there something you like to be called? Other than Eleven?”She fidgeted with the corner of the quilt. “El,” she said quietly.“El,” he repeated. He smiled. “It suits you.”She smiled back, and the sight of it—the first real smile he’d seen on her—made his heart clench with some painful kind of joy.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper
Comments: 24
Kudos: 82





	said that you would like to share my road

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "A Long Time Ago" by Jim Croce.

The girl would have to wear something, Hopper realized, something other than that tattered pink dress she’d had on since he first met her. He glanced over at her, curled cross-legged in the passenger seat of the Blazer, turned away from him to look out the window. She’d need clothes, and probably books or toys or movies or something, and maybe something pretty to put up in the drab little bedroom in his drab little cabin, and he cursed himself for not having thought of any of that.

Perhaps he was getting ahead of himself, though. She hadn’t even agreed to stay with him yet; for all he knew, she’d run off after one warm meal. But then again, he was the adult—a big and intimidating one, too. He could easily force her to stay if he wanted to. He didn’t think that would count as kidnapping. After all, who the hell would he have been kidnapping her _from?_

She hadn’t asked where he was taking her, hadn’t really seemed to care about anything much other than the fact that the car was warm and contained the first comfortable seat she’d sat in in weeks. So he’d followed her lead and stayed quiet, afraid of saying something that might spook her, unsure where to start even if he hadn’t been afraid.

By the time he pulled off the road and stopped the car she’d fallen asleep. He cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said a bit uncomfortably, unsure what he was supposed to call her. “Hey, kid, wake up, we’re here.”

He looked through the passenger seat window at his house, barely visible through the trees. It was dangerous, he knew, taking her here. The men from the lab had bugged it once and he couldn’t be entirely certain they weren’t still watching him. But the cabin was a wreck and there was no food there, or anything that they needed, really, and this still seemed less dangerous than any of the alternatives. At least it was dark out. “Hey, come on,” he said again, reaching out to touch her shoulder, and she startled awake. “It’s okay,” he said more quietly, seeing her sudden, wide-eyed fear. “Come on, we’re here.”

She stared at him, unblinking, and he got the distinct impression that she somehow _knew _things about him. Not like a mind-reader, exactly, but there was something unnervingly intent in her expression that caught him off guard. He wondered if that was one of her powers, like finding people in the Upside Down. Then she turned away from him and opened the door and jumped down from the car, landing with a soft crunch in the icy snow.

Hopper shook himself, and stepped out after her.

—

He wished as soon as he opened the front door that he’d bothered to clean up his house a bit. But just like with the still-uninhabitable cabin, he’d refused to do anything that suggested he was expecting Eleven to come stay with him. It wouldn’t be safe, he told himself, if he started doing anything out of the ordinary; it could blow his cover before he’d even started hiding her. He knew, though, that that wasn’t really his reason. He had just been terrified that any sort of preparation would somehow jinx it, and ensure that she never came to him.

Now he tried not to feel too ashamed of himself as she took in the filthy living room, littered with empty beer cans and unwashed dishes. “Tomorrow we’ll go someplace else,” he told her, once the door was locked securely behind them. “Someplace safer. But it’s not ready yet, so we’re gonna stay here tonight, okay?”

She didn’t answer. She was standing in the middle of the room, turning slowly on the spot, taking it all in. It occurred to him suddenly that this was very likely only the second real house she’d ever been in, after Wheelers’. He caught the way her gaze lingered on Sara’s drawing tacked up on the wall, and he held his breath, waiting for a question about it. But none came.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her. That was a stupid question. Of course she must be hungry. She turned her wide, unreadable eyes on him and, after a long pause, nodded almost imperceptibly. “Alright. Why don’t you sit down on the couch, okay? I’ll find us something to eat.”

In truth, there wasn’t much. His breakfast most days consisted of donuts at the station; his dinner, greasy takeout from wherever he thought he was least likely to run into someone he knew. Still, he waited until she had sat down—nervously, perched on the very edge as if poised to run at any moment—and then went into the kitchen to rummage through his cabinets. He found tomato soup, an ancient box of crackers, a can of pears that he couldn’t remember buying. It should be enough, he thought. She was hardly in a position to be picky after weeks in the woods, and he doubted her stomach would be able to handle much anyway.

When he returned to the living room a few minutes later, having heated up the soup, he found that she seemed to have relaxed a little bit. Her body was still tense, her eyes alert, but she had leaned back, allowing herself to rest against the cushions. When she saw him, though she sat up straight again.

“Here,” he said, pressing the bowl carefully into her hands. “Careful, it’s a little hot. I want you to take small sips, okay? It might make you sick if you try to eat too fast.” She took the bowl and gripped it tightly, but just stared up at him blankly. He went over his words again in his head, trying to figure out what part she might not have understood. “Small sips—don’t eat a lot at once. Here—” He reached out slowly, so that she wouldn’t be startled, and picked up the spoon, demonstrating what he meant. “Like that. And eat slow, okay?”

She nodded, and he handed the spoon back to her. He watched her as she took the first few hesitant spoonfuls, then smiled at her in what he hoped was an encouraging way. It hardly seemed likely that this girl didn’t know how to _eat_—she was twelve years old, after all, even if she’d spent those years locked away from the world—but something in the slow, deliberate, slightly unsteady way that she raised the spoon to her lips seemed to suggest that she was unfamiliar with the action. Perhaps it was just because she was so exhausted.

That explanation began to seem more likely when, after half the soup was gone, her eyelids started to droop and she failed to pick the spoon back up for another bite. She looked suddenly so close to sleep that he worried the bowl would slip from her hands.

“You done?” he asked, rescuing it from her unsteady grip. She looked up at him, and he could read the question easily in her eyes: _okay? _“It’s okay,” he said, “you don’t have to finish it. As long as you’re not hungry anymore?” She shook her head. It worried him a bit, how quickly she had lost her appetite. He’d expected that she would at least be able to finish the soup; he hadn’t given her a very large bowl. Still, he wasn’t going to force her. There would be time for that later. Right now, he was loathe to do anything that might break the fragile trust she seemed to have in him. So he just set the bowl aside and said, “How about we get you cleaned up now, yeah? Then you can go to bed. None of my clothes will really fit you, but you can wear one of my shirts as a dress or something.”

Her eyes widened at that, and, to his surprise, she shook her head.

“No?” he asked. “You don’t want to change? Kid, your clothes are filthy.” She shook her head again. “You’ve got to get clean. It’s not healthy for you to be dirty for so long.”

“No,” she said.

It was the very first word he’d heard out of her, and he was taken aback by her voice—rough, gravelly, unnaturally low for a kid so young. He realized it must be the first word she’d said aloud in a very long time. The thought made his heart ache for her even more than it already did, but he was relieved to see that she was not entirely mute. He tried not to react too much to her having finally spoken, afraid that any strong response would scare he back into silence, but he still tried to coax more words out of her. “Why don’t you want to change your clothes?” he asked, careful to keep any trace of judgement out of his voice.

She hesitated for a long time, seeming to struggle with herself. Then she ran her palm along the skirt of her dress and said quietly, “Mine.” Then added, even more softly, “From Mike.”

And, shit, of course she didn’t want to take the dress off—it was probably the first real article of clothing she’d ever had, given to her by the first person to ever show her any kindness. He thought of the Wheeler kid, tears in his eyes as he pleaded with him outside of the Byers’ house the day after Will was allowed to go home: _Please, I know she’s alive, you have to help me look for her._

_There’s nothing I can do, kid, _he’d said, lighting a cigarette. _You know I can’t go digging around the lab anymore. That was the deal._

_That’s a bullshit deal, _Mike had said angrily, and Hopper hadn’t had the heart to chastise him for his language, because it _was _a bullshit deal. He was well aware of that. But what else could he have done?

“Alright,” he said to Eleven. “You don’t have to change tonight. But you do need to at least take your shoes off so you can get some sleep, yeah?”

She nodded, looking satisfied with that condition, and bent down to pull her shoes off. She fumbled with the laces, though, and Hopper, realizing that someone else must have double-knotted them for her when they were back at the school, leaned down to do them himself. He pulled the shoes off as carefully as he could, aware that her feet must be horribly sore and blistered after weeks without removing them. The socks underneath, he found, were almost black with filth.

“Your—” he started to say, but then looked up to meet her gaze again. She was wearing an almost challenging expression, as if daring him to contradict her in her will to keep all her clothes on, and he remembered quite suddenly that this little girl would be capable of killing him without lifting a finger if she wanted to. The socks weren’t worth the fight. And really, what was one more night after so many weeks of wearing them? “Okay,” he sighed, “you can keep the socks on too. We’ll get this all figured out tomorrow. Right now, it’s time for you to go to bed.”

He went to find her some blankets and a pillow for the couch, and when he returned to the living room, he found her already lying down with her eyes closed. He couldn’t help but smile slightly at the sight. She looked so much younger like this; almost like a normal kid, but for the short hair and filthy clothes. He draped the blanket over her and, gently, lifted her head to slide a pillow under it. She stirred a little, made a tiny noise in the back of her throat, but did not wake.

“Night, kid,” he said softly, and settled in the armchair to watch over her.

—

She woke early the next morning. He hadn’t slept, not wanting to be caught off guard on the off chance that his house was still bugged and someone might come and take her; instead, once he thought she was deeply enough asleep that she wouldn’t disturbed by the noise, he’d begun packing up the essentials they’d need at the cabin. Dishes, first of all, and bedding, and clothes for at least a few days. He’d have to move his things slowly, he thought, to avoid suspicion. Not that there was really all that much he needed. His house was appallingly bare.

He was in the kitchen making coffee when she crept in, so silently that he was started to turn and see her standing against the wall. She looked somehow even more exhausted than she had last night, but when he asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to sleep any longer, she she nodded.

“Alright,” he said, “we might as well get moving, then. We’re gonna go to that safer place. You need anything before we leave? Anything to eat?” She shook her head, and, remembering how little she had eaten last night, he wondered if he should press her into eating something. But he didn’t really have any suitable breakfast food anyway, so he decided it could probably wait until he’d had a chance to pick up some groceries.

He made a couple trips out to the car to load it with the boxes he’d packed, and with each one, he felt his anxiety steadily increase. Under cover of darkness, keeping her hidden had seemed relatively simple; now, in the daylight, the full danger of what he was doing began to sink in. This was a whole _person _that he was hiding—a tiny, silent person, but a person nonetheless. Nothing about this was going to be simple. Nothing about this was going to be easy.

He didn’t let her leave the house until he was completely sure that he’d packed everything he needed, and then he hurried her quickly out to the Blazer and opened the back. She looked up at him, not understanding.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t have you sitting up front now that it’s light out. Someone might see. It won’t be dark in there, okay? There’ll still be light from the windows. Just, you’ll be low enough that no one will see you.”

After a long hesitation, she climbed into the back of the car. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes. Just before he shut the door, he smiled at her, trying his best to be reassuring.

He drove quickly, thanking whatever God might be out there that no one was going to pull over the Chief of Police.

—

He didn’t want to leave her alone, but there wasn’t any food at the cabin and he was not going to fall asleep there until the door had about four more locks on it. So after a few hours of work—after they’d swept and dusted and stowed all the boxes in the storage space under the floor and put the furniture into a more respectable arrangement—he said reluctantly, “I need to go get some things from the store.” She looked up from the ancient stack of puzzles she’d been inspecting. “I’ll be back real soon, okay? You just stay here. Stay inside, and don’t open the windows or doors, and—“ He bit back the sudden swell of panic. “If anyone knocks, or tries to come in, you hide immediately. And when I get back I’ll call through the door so you know it’s me, okay?”

She nodded and then went back to the puzzles, looking remarkably unconcerned. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected—that she’d panic about being left, maybe, or beg him not to go—but he supposed she was much more used to this hiding thing than he was. She’d been doing it alone in the woods for a month, after all. Being left alone in a locked and heated cabin was probably about as safe as she’d felt since escaping the lab.

He wished he felt the same. He jumped every time a car passed him in the opposite direction, convinced that they were all headed to his cabin to take Eleven away. What had he been _thinking,_ bringing her there with him? There were records of him owning the cabin, anyone who suspected him of hiding something would go there first, he should have gone to a motel out of town, paid in cash—

The car behind him honked and he startled, realizing suddenly that he’d been stalled at a stop sign for far too long. He cursed himself. They’d find him out in _minutes _if he kept acting this stupid and strange.

He remembered his panicked thoughts on the drive home with her last night: she’d need real clothes of her own, and something other than a few musty old puzzles to occupy herself. But he’d have to go into the city to get those to avoid the risk that somebody would catch him buying stuff for a kid, and there wasn’t time for that today, not when every passing minute made him more certain that he’d return to the cabin to find the door busted in and Eleven missing. So he decided to just go to the grocery store and then to the hardware store for locks before heading back home.

Even while going through the checkout line at the grocery store, buying perfectly ordinary food items, he couldn’t help but feel on edge, exposed, as if the teenager ringing him up might guess from his purchases that he was hiding a fugitive psionic kid. Were Eggos a normal thing for him to be buying, he wondered? What about apple juice—that was a kid drink, wasn’t it? Anyone who knew him would know that the hadn’t had a glass of apple juice since he was about ten. But both items were already on the counter, and it was too late to put them back without just drawing attention to them—and then the clerk was ringing them up—and then she was handing him the bags and his receipt, and saying _have a nice day, _and he took a deep breath and left the store on legs that felt like jelly.

On the way back to the cabin, though he did not encounter a single other car, he changed course three times to make sure that he was not being followed.****

—

“Alright,” he said to her as she took the last bite of the Eggo he’d given her for dessert. “I think it’s about time we get you cleaned up for real, now.” She’d washed her hands before dinner, but as far as Hopper knew, that was the full extent of the washing she’d done since he’d found her. “That means a real bath, then clean clothes.”

He hoped she wouldn’t fight him on that. He still wanted to avoid any kind of confrontation as much as possible, but if she still was unwilling to change her clothes, he would have to put his foot down. To his relief, she just swallowed the waffle and nodded.

Then another thought occurred to him. “You know how to clean yourself, yeah?” He had no idea how she’d gotten clean in the lab; for all he knew, they’d gone as far as giving her sponge baths for twelve years. But she nodded, and then, to prove herself, mimed scrubbing at her arms. The action made him smile a little. “Good,” he said. “Come on, I’ll help you get the bath started.”

They stood from the table and he followed him into the tiny bathroom, where he sat down on the edge of the tub. He pushed down the drain plug and then turned the faucet. “Cold,” he said, turning it to the right; then, turning it to the left, “hot.” She watched raptly, and though she’d said she knew how to clean herself, he got the impression that she’d never taken a proper bath in a regular tub. “Here, put your hand under it—like this—and tell me if the temperature feels good.”

She let the water run over her hand for a few seconds. “Good.”

“Great. I’ll go find you something else to put on while we wait for it to fill up, okay?”

He returned to the bathroom a minute later with an old, worn thermal undershirt, one of the things he’d brought for her to wear until he could get her some real clothes. She would be absolutely swimming in it, but that was just as well, he thought, since he certainly didn’t have an pants that would fit her, or even anything that she could wear as underwear. For the thousandth time that day, he wished he’d prepared better for this. It was one thing to have brought her to a cluttered, dusty cabin, but not being able to provide her with such a basic necessity as underpants seemed like an enormous oversight on his part.

“You can wear this for now,” he said, laying the shirt over the toilet lid. Eleven had taken his spot on the edge of the tub, still letting the water run over one of her hands. “Tomorrow I’ll try and get you something that actually fits. That tub looks about full now, let’s shut the water off.” He reached past her to turn the knob. Then, nervous suddenly, he stepped back as far as the tiny room would allow and said, “I’ll be just outside if you need me, okay? I want you to scrub yourself down real good, _every _part of you, and don’t forget to wash your hair too. Just yell if you need anything.

Eleven nodded, and while she bent down to pull off her socks and shoes, he stepped out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

She stayed in the bath for nearly half an hour. He spent the whole time working as quietly as possible, listening hard for the gentle splashing noises that indicated that she was still okay. It wasn’t that he thought she couldn’t handle it, not really—it was just, this kid was his responsibility now, and he didn’t exactly have the greatest track record with keeping little girls safe. It would be just like him to let her drown in the tub on her very first night here.

She finally emerged just as he finished wiping down the kitchen counters. His old shirt was almost comically large on her, falling well past her knees and more than covering her little hands, but she did look much better now that she was clean. With her face dirt-free and slightly pink from the heat, she looked more normal than he’d ever seen her.

“Hey,” he said, tossing the rag into the sink and coming to sit down on the couch. “How was your bath?”

“Good,” she said, but she’d hesitated before saying it, and she was looking down instead of at him.

He frowned. “Is something wrong, kid?” She didn’t answer, just kept looking at the floor, and after a moment, he followed her gaze. Then he had to stop himself from making an audible noise of shock. “_Jesus,_” he said quietly. “Okay, uh—can you walk okay? Can you come sit down?”

Her feet, which he hadn’t yet seen bare, were an absolute mess. They were grossly discolored, wrinkled and pale far beyond what would be normal after a thirty-minute bath, and ugly scabs covered her toes. When she started to make her way slowly towards him, he caught a glimpse of the backs of her ankles, which had been rubbed raw and, he was pretty sure, were still bleeding a bit.

He stood to help her the rest of the way to the couch. When they were both seated, he gently pulled her feet up onto the cushion so that he could look at them better. They looked even more painful up close. “Jesus, kid. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” She just kept looking down at her feet. “You’ve gotta tell me if you’re hurting, okay? I won’t know how to help you otherwise.” When she still didn’t say anything, he prompted her. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she repeated. Then she finally met his eyes, and he was startled to find her looking more nervous than she had since he’d found her—even more nervous than when he’d first asked if she wanted to come home home with him. “Not mad?”

“Mad? Of course I’m not mad, kid. Why would I be mad?”

She shrugged, looking away again, and for a long moment he just kept staring at her. She expected that he’d be mad at her for being injured—there was a lot to unpack there, he thought. A lot that, if he was ever going to help this wildly traumatized kid lead a halfway normal life, he would probably have to address at some point. But now wasn’t the time. Now, he just needed to fix up her feet as best he could and get her to bed for some much-needed rest.

“Alright,” he said, prodding one of the scabs as gently as he could to judge how healed it was. She winced, but made no sound. “Most of this should just clear up with time, I think, but I’m gonna have to get some antiseptic for those ankles so we can make sure they don’t get infected.”

“Anti—anti…septic?”

“Yeah, antiseptic. It’s a special cream you put on cuts to help them heal. I haven’t got any now, but I’ll buy some tomorrow, okay? For now we’re just gonna make sure they’re clean and I’ll see if I’ve got anything we can use as a bandage.”

It seemed as big an oversight as his failure to buy her clothes, the lack of any sort of medical supplies in the cabin—bigger, even, since he’d been to the store that day already and it hadn’t even occurred to him to buy anything other than food. He couldn’t buy her kid things in Hawkins, where anyone might see him, but there was no excuse at all for having forgotten something as innocuous and a box of Band-Aids and a tube of antiseptic cream. For an instant, he was horribly, selfishly glad that her frame of reference for how adults should act was so utterly fucked, because it would make it less apparent to her how unprepared he really was. He regretted the thought immediately.

“Here.” He sat back down beside here with a damp cloth and a strip of fabric cut from one of his older shirts. “This might sting a little, but I want to make sure your feet are as clean as possible.”

“Cleaned in bath,” she pointed out.

In spite of everything, he grinned broadly at her—he was pretty sure this was the first time she’d strung more than two words together, or spoken at all without being directly prompted. “I know, kid. I just want to be extra safe.”

She nodded her understanding, but then hissed in pain, jerking away instinctively, as he began to rub her feet gently with the washcloth.

“Shit, kid, I’m sorry.” He reached out and put a hand lightly on her knee. “I’m sorry. Just try to stay still, okay? This’ll help your feet feel better in the long run, I promise.”

She looked solemnly up at him. “Promise?”

“Yeah, promise. It means—”

“I know promise,” she interrupted him.

He smiled again. She said it so earnestly, so seriously, and he couldn’t help the tiny stab of affection that he felt towards her. Everything else aside, the kid really was just pretty damn cute. “Alright, then. Well. I promise.”

Slowly, she extended her feet back toward him. “Promise,” she said again, quietly, as if to reassure herself. He began to clean the wounds again, and this time she did not pull away

—

“Bed,” said Hopper as soon as he saw her yawn. She looked up from the puzzle she’d been working on all evening since he’d finished bandaging her feet. For a moment he thought she’d argue, but she just nodded. “I haven’t got any real pajamas for you yet, but you can just keep wearing that shirt for now. Does that sound okay?”

They brushed their teeth side-by-side in front of the tiny bathroom sink, Hopper taking far more care with it than he normally would have in an effort to set a good example. This, though, she seemed familiar with, scrubbing her teeth with more confidence than he’d seen from her all day. He supposed that dental hygiene was one of those things that would have been important even in the lab.

He followed her to her room after they’d finished washing up, unsure suddenly what his role was. Clearly she was capable of being somewhat independent, having just survived alone out in the woods for a month, but he felt for some reason that he should be there to—what? Tuck her in? He thought of all the nights with Sara, sitting next to her in her little bed and reading to her, doing funny voices for all the characters. He’d read for way too long, caught up in it, and sometimes Diane would come and stand in the doorway, watching them fondly for a bit before scolding him for keeping Sara up too late. That seemed like such a long time ago—a different life, almost. He’d been a different man back then. He hardly felt capable of doing the same thing now for Eleven. He wasn’t even sure she’d want him to.

She was watching him, he realized, already in bed and under the covers. He cleared his throat, about to wish her good night, and then remembered the question that had been burning in the back of his mind since he found her. “Hey, kid?” he said. “Is there something you like to be called? Other than Eleven?”

She fidgeted with the corner of the quilt. “El,” she said quietly.

“El,” he repeated. He smiled. “It suits you.”

She smiled back, and the sight of it—the first real smile he’d seen on her—made his heart clench with some painful kind of joy.

“Good night, El.”

“Good night,” she replied.

Maybe, he thought, as he shut the door softly behind him—maybe, they could make this work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It would never have occurred to me that El would have trench foot or something similar after walking around in the same wet socks for a month; that detail was inspired by DeutchRemy's "Days," which everyone should go read.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! you can find me on tumblr @ diogxnes


End file.
